I would like to be associated with the Tánaiste's remarks in regard to the late Tom Burke. "Legend" is a much-overused word but it is one that we can appropriately apply to Tom. Our sympathies go to his family and media comrades.

Back in June, I told the Financial Times that Ireland could live with a small increase in our corporation tax rate. The Tánaiste accused me then of walking into a trap with those comments. He went on to accuse me and the Labour Party of damaging the national interest. It was clear then that the writing was on the wall, when nearly every country in the world was signing up to this process. Four months on, it now seems the Government is going to follow my advice and that of the Labour Party and sign up to the 15% rate. Will the Tánaiste accept that he was wrong in June and will he have the good sense - and, indeed, the good grace - to withdraw his patronising charge? It is good leadership to be able to admit when one is wrong and to acknowledge that fact publicly.

We know there are two pillars to the OECD process. Projections we have seen from the Department of Finance suggest the cost of pillar 1 will mean a €1 billion impact in 2023, rising to €2 billion in 2025. Ireland has already signed up to pillar 1 but there has been a change in scope under that pillar and significant movement on pillar 2 since those figures entered the public domain. We are all working off old figures. Does the Tánaiste accept that what Ireland may lose on the pillar 1 swings, we could gain on the 15% roundabout? Corporation tax is expected to come in at €12 billion this year. A simple straight-line increase to take it up to 15% would potentially bring in an extra €2.5 billion. This would clearly cancel out any losses under pillar 1. However, we have not been able to get access to any costings on this. There is a huge information vacuum for those of us trying responsibly to interpret the Government position. Will the Tánaiste confirm that updated figures will be published today? Will he further confirm that when the Cabinet meets today, the financial impact of these proposals will be presented to Ministers to help them to make an informed decision on this extremely momentous shift? Will he also confirm that the 12.5% rate will continue to apply to indigenous firms?

In summation, does the Tánaiste still believe that I and the Labour Party are damaging the national interest? Is it not the case that we could gain revenue and be quids in here because we will regain on the swings what we lose on the roundabouts? Will the 12.5% corporation rate still apply to indigenous firms operating here and, indeed, to smaller multinational corporations located here, because pillar 2 applies only to firms with a global turnover in excess of €750 million?

The Deputy is a former trade union negotiator and he understands negotiations, as do I. It is deeply unhelpful when someone on one's side - we were team Ireland on an issue like this - makes concessions on one's behalf. It is exactly the same thing for a shop steward or trade union official going in to negotiate with an employer and somebody from his or her team starts making concessions before they are agreed. It is deeply unhelpful and it was damaging. That is my assessment of the situation and I stand over it. That is if the Deputy sees himself as being part of team Ireland.

There will be a Cabinet meeting this afternoon at which we will discuss this matter. No decision has yet been made. Our existing projections are that any change of this nature will reduce our revenue by approximately €2 billion a year, but that is only an estimate. Nobody can know that for sure. It is based on certain assumptions that may or may not be correct and may well be updated. I do not know if there will be any financials published today but I will get back to the Deputy on that.

Our 12.5% corporate profit tax has been a huge success. It is a really important part of our industrial policy and has, not entire but strong, cross-party support in this House. More than a quarter of a million people work in multinational companies in Ireland. We want to keep those jobs and the 100,000 or so indirect jobs that arise from the direct employment.

We take in approximately €12 billion a year in corporation profit tax. That is roughly double what the average European country takes in on a per head basis and it is evidence that in a world where capital, labour, talent, investment and money are mobile, lower taxes can mean higher revenues. It is proof positive of that.

What we have always tried to maintain are two things - competitiveness and certainty. Competitiveness in knowing that our rate will be substantially lower than that of our competitors, and certainty, so that we can say to companies thinking of making a 30-year investment in Ireland and employing tens of thousands of people that the rate will not change even if the Government or the economic cycle changes. That is something we have to consider today because if we agree to a new global minimum rate, there is the advantage of no country being able to undercut us. Some countries have actually undercut us in recent years and that is something we would avoid if we were to sign up to a global minimum rate.

In terms of our concerns, they relate to the issue of the rate being "at least" the relevant figure. We want to make sure that whatever rate is agreed is certain and will not ratchet up over time. There is the issue relating to SMEs and mid-caps. We want to ensure that for smaller and middle-sized companies we can continue to charge the lower rate of 12.5%. We want to make sure that our research and development tax credit is protected. We also want to make sure that if countries sign up to this, they actually implement it. We do not want to be the country to implement it but for our competitors then not to do so. That would be a disadvantage to us. Those are the issues that are currently in play.

I certainly will not be patronised by the Tánaiste or anybody else in Fine Gael regarding what represents the national interest. The Labour Party has always put the national interest first, as history shows. The truth is that we could have boxed off the 15% condition very early on and it was the Tánaiste and his Government that created the kind of uncertainty that has dominated this process in recent months. I have asked him the very simple question of how much extra or less it is forecast that Ireland will raise in corporation tax if we adopt the 15% rate for multinationals. Is he telling me seriously that this has not been worked out or presented to his Cabinet colleagues who are about to make a momentous decision today that will affect Ireland's national industrial strategy? The decision today will have far-reaching consequences for the economy, jobs and business. Will the Tánaiste commit to those figures being published and shared with Members of this House later today after they have been presented to Cabinet members, if he is prepared to do so?

The Minister, Deputy Donohoe, both as finance minister and as head of the Eurogroup, handled these negotiations very well and has made sure that we got the concessions and protections we wanted. Had we folded earlier, as Deputy Nash perhaps would have done were he in government-----

Committed earlier.

-----I do not think the Minister would have been able to secure the reassurances he has secured in the past couple of weeks because significant efforts were made by other countries to get us into the tent and we had our price for that.

As regards the Cabinet meeting today, the most recent projections I have seen - they may have changed - estimate, and it is only an estimate, that we would lose in the region of €2 billion a year in revenue. However, nobody knows that for sure. Nobody predicted that after the most recent range of changes we made, corporation profit tax receipts would soar. There are so many variables that it is very difficult to know but if it is possible - it is a matter for the Minister for Finance to publish that information - I see no reason we would not publish the figures.